Wireless Emergency Communications State of Technology Conference September 21-23, 2009 - Atlanta, Georgia

Welcome to the 2009 SOT Conference website. The Wireless RERC State of Technology Conference on Wireless Emergency Communications hosted a FREE event that brought together domestic and international stakeholders to examine the potential of wireless communications technology for improving support and assistance for persons with disabilities before, during and after a natural or manmade disaster.

Pulling off a conference of this caliber took the hard work, time and resources of a great many talented people.

We would like to thank the following who have made this conference a success:

Our anchor sponsor and Wireless RERC grantor, NIDRR.

Our platinum sponsors:

AT&T

CTIA-The Wireless Association

Microsoft

Research In Motion

We would like to give a special thanks to:

AT&T’s Hamish Caldwell and Roman Smith for their support of this conference and with the WEC development project by donating service for our field testing efforts;

David Dougall and Research In Motion for their support of this conference and the WEC development project by donating devices for our field testing efforts; and

CTIA’s Dane Snowden who is a long-term supporter of the Wireless RERC and member of the Advisory Board;

Our Gold sponsor…

Booz Allen Hamilton who designed and facilitated the Tabletop Exercise (TTX)

Thank you also to…

DeafLink, Inc., Kay Chiodo and her staff for providing video remote interpreting for the TTX.

The speakers and moderators for traveling near and far to share their expertise and intriguing points of view.

Our Partner Organizations, specifically American Association of People with Disabilities, the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology, the FCC, Foundations for the Future, GTRI, National Council on Disability, National Emergency Management Resource Center, National Emergency Number Association (NENA), National Organization on Disability, North Carolina Division of Services for the Deaf and the Hard of Hearing and Public Broadcasting Atlanta.

Additionally, I would like to thank our conference patrons:  Ability Magazine, Alternative Communication Services, Atlanta Business Chronicle, Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, The Coca-Cola Company, Fast Signs of Buckhead, Premier Exhibitions – Dialog in the Dark, Print 1 Direct, Office Depot and The Show Business.

Finally this conference would not have run so smoothly without the incredible work of conference operations team, Jackie Herndon, Jennifer Pasley, Nichole Moore, and Helena Mitchell; our proceedings team Paul Baker and James White; our technical guru, Ken Bernard; the Wireless RERC staff, in particular, Mike Jones, Co-director, who also took some wonderful photos of the event, Brian Jones, Web Designer, and Tiffany O’Quinn, Art Director.  The ambassador volunteers and staff from the Georgia Radio Reading Service, (thank you Jae Crosby and Bettye Harris for recruiting and coordinating them); also a hearty thank you to the the local volunteers from the Georgia Tech community and the Metro-Atlanta area at large.  Finally, conference center staff Anne Jaudon, Shelly Ward and Bobby Jones.

We have a great team, and team work makes the dream work!

So what’s next?

We will compile a record of the conference obtained from speaker papers, presentations and notes taken during the Q&A sessions which will be published in on-line conference proceedings.

Select peer reviewed papers will be published in a special issue of the International Journal of Emergency Management in 2010.

Questions submitted to the panels that went unanswered will be posted on the conference on-line forum.

We will work to apply and refine conference findings through new and continued collaborations with all of the stakeholders.

Stay tuned for more.

This event was made possible by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), United States Department of Education, under grant number H133E060061 to the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for Wireless Technologies (Wireless RERC), Georgia Institute of Technology and Shepherd Center.